Random

I feel so confused. I dont’ know what I want or what I think about things. Part of my problem is that I don’t feel like I exist as a person. I’m not reallly there. I think it is called depersonalization and is apparently either a symptom of mental illness or a mental illness in it’s own right. There is nothing inside me which makes up a person like there is in other people. It just isn’t there. But then I know logically I must be a person because I am walking around and look like a person. Except I’m not a person. It ping pong back and forth between the rational part, which sounds like I am telling lies to myself to make myself feel better, and the feeling part which twists the knife in even if I use the words “I”, “me” or “myself”. It’s been like this for all of my life that I remember. Perhaps it wasn’t there when I was young child and I just can’t remember it not being there. I will be 30 years old this year and I’ve seeing psychiatrists since I was 15 years old. First, I was diagnosed with depression, then recurrent depressive disorder, then bipolar II disorder, then bipolar I disorder and, in the last few years, an eating disorder which one of them called bulimia and the others just referred to as “an eating disorder”. The reason I am writing about any of this is because I think the ‘depersonalisation’ part is why I feel so confused and why I can’t work out what I want like a normal person. I don’t “want” anything. I don’t even “want” to be better, whatever better means.

I don’t know what to do. I dont’ know whether what I should be doing is really obvious and I’m too just stupid and pathetic to see it. I don’t have anyone to talk to which is just as well because I don’t know how to talk to someone else about me anyway. Whatever they say back I take badly and think they are either trying to point how useless I am or how bad I am and why I should be feeling guilty because I’m obviously am guilty. I just want to hurt and punish myself. Like if I was separated there would be a me standing and kicking the other me on the ground. I really want to hurt the pathetic me on the ground. I think if I was properly punished thinkgs would be better. Something would be better. Maybe not me, as a person, because I don’t really exist as a person, but something would be better if I was punished enough. I used to think I was good at talking to people and I remember bragging about that. Which is laughable now. So I can’t talk to people about myself and I am too inadequate to work out what to do myself which makes me stuck.

My main problem is that I don’t have somewhere to live. I think that is my main problem. I don’t have somewhere to live or a way to pay for that. I have been living with a boyfriend for several years but we split up in December. He said I could stay at his flat until I got my benefits sorted out and somewhere to live. We moved up to the city we are in now about 18 months ago and I know no one here other than him. So I want to go back to the city we came from which is about four hours away. I spoke to the Welfare Rights Officer at the psychiatric hospital who said I could claim income support even though I was still living in the same flat as my ex-boyfriend though I wouldn’t be able to claim housing benefit until I found a new flat. So I claimed income support over the phone and the adviser said I would have to have an interview in a few weeks to prove I couldn’t work but that it was routine and I would get more information later. The paperwork arrived through the post a couple of days later and I signed it and handed it in. Then another person from the Jobcentre Plus phoned me and asked if I could go in and see her. She didn’t say why so I assumed it was the interview to prove I couldn’t work. She did ask if I was still living with my ex-boyfriend but that was it. When I arrived she started asking me a lot of questions immediately and didn’t explain what was going on. I didn’t understand why she was asking me about whether me or my ex-boyfriend did the cooking, laundry, etc, until a while into the interview when I realised that she didn’t believe we had really split up. I was confused and stupid. She wrote down my answers on her form as if I was writing them and then asked me to sign it. She wrote very little at all in each section. It seemed like I had offended her when I asked if I could read it before I signed it and I didn’t know whether it would be sensible to add more into her answers. I didn’t know if she made the final decision and so didn’t want to offend her further. At the end, as I was leaving, she said a decision maker would write to me in a week to ten days with an answer so I don’t think it was her making the decision after all. Today I got the letter saying that I am not entitled to claim benefits as my ex-boyfriend and I are “living together as husband and wife”. If I want to claim benefits I need to not be living in the same flat as my ex-boyfriend.

Getting a new flat seems so overwhelming to me, like it’s laughable that I could ever do that. There seems to be so much that complicates what shouldn’t really be that hard and I’m sure there is more I haven’t even thought of. I am a undischarged bankrupt so I can’t use an agency or a landlord that credit checks. I have looked at the adverts online and in the shop windows in the area I think I would like to live and almost all said “no DHSS”. I can get housing benefit paid directly to me and lie to the landlord. I don’t have a problem with lying to the landlord – I thought I’d say I was a writer because then there would be no employer they could contact and no pay slips. I also have two pets who I want to keeep. I do want something after all! But they are in a cage and I can hide that and have hid that from many landlords in the past. But what will I do about the bills that come in? I get DLA just now but that wouldn’t even pay the rent let alone any of the other bills. When my ex-boyfriend was unemployed for a few months we waited five and a half months for housing benefit to start. What on Earth would I do then? I am not close to my mother or my father and the thought of asking them for money is awful. My father in particular has made it clear that I am a disappointment to him and he pretty much avoids me and keeps his distance. That doesn’t bother me very often but if I ask him for money then he will be involved in my life and I just can’t handle that. I’ve never been able to explain to his satisfaction why I can’t just keep going when I feel low or why I do any of the hundreds of other things that he thinks are ridiculous. I can’t justify myself to him and it’s not even that I don’t want to because I would really would like to so that maybe he didn’t think I was so bad anymore. As for my mother, she doesn’t have any money and I dont’ want her involved in my life either for pretty much the same reason. My mother doesn’t believe I have an eating disorder though I try not to take that personally as she doesn’t believe my sister has bulimia either. So if I can’t get money from somewhere I will simply have to rely on the benefits turning up in time because I have no other choice.

It all seems too much for me. I am exhausted just now and I haven’t even started. Perhaps this is just more of me wanting things to be easy and then just throwing a tantrum when it turns out to be difficult. Finding a flat where me and my two pets will be safe seems like something I could never do like being prime minister or something. I don’t want this and I don’t want to have to do anything. So why not just make it all stop? I could make all of this just disappear and I wouldn’t exist anymore. I have been ready for a while. It was a few years ago that I first tried to kill myself and obviously it didn’t work. Afterwards was horrific and I don’t want to fail again. I was so close a few weeks ago but one of my pets got really ill and I couldn’t leave her when she need someone so badly. I took care of her and she died. By then I had got frightened again and couldn’t do it. I want to jump but it is one thing being convinced you are ready when you are safely at home and another when you are looking over the edge as I’ve found a few times now. There is a hotel that I go to is high enough. I researched this a fair bit and I’m almost sure I need to jump from six stories or higher. But not too much higher because that is more time falling which will be terrible enough as it is. I’ve never managed it though. I have a back up plan of taking an overdose and I have collected the pills and popped them all out so I can take them quickly in a particular order. Overdoses don’t seem to work very often which is why I thing jumping would be better, if I could actually do it. My two remaining pets are both old and frail. I’ve been thinking since last autumn that it would be the right thing to do to wait until they die before I do. I took them on and I’m responsible for them. What used to stop me dying up until a few years ago was the thought of that my suicide would do to my family and friends but to be honest I think that after the inital grief (which is assuming a lot for some of them) they would be relieved that I wasn’t about. Also I hardly see my old friends anymore so again, I don’t think it would make much difference to them. I think my ex-boyfriend would take it the hardest but I’ve kind of sowed the seeds so that he’ll blame the psychiatry services up here. That is a bit manipulative and mean of me but I don’t think I have a whole lot of choice. I haven’t lied to him and made things up but I have told him what they are like and let him hear things that I used to keep to myself.